Welcome to the Internet version of

The Data Analysis BriefBook

The BriefBook is a condensed handbook, or an extended glossary, written
in encyclopedic format, covering subjects in
statistics, computing, analysis, and related fields. It intends
to be both introduction and reference for data analysts,
scientists and engineers.
This site has been selected as one of the top educational resources on the
Web, by StudyWeb.

You will access version 16, which is also
available as a book (order directly from
Springer or
from your preferred bookstore).
The Internet version will be updated occasionally, and is not necessarily
identical to the printed version.

In all cases, we appreciate your feedback:
please send comments, error corrections, or your suggestions for new
contributions, to
R.K.Bock.

Part of the information has been derived, with permission, from a booklet
FORMULAE AND METHODS IN EXPERIMENTAL DATA
EVALUATION, published in 1984 by the European Physical
Society, and out of print since many years.
This BriefBook is a major update and extension, but
some original contributions by
V.Blobel (Hamburg), S.Brandt (Siegen),
R.Frühwirth (Vienna), F.James (Geneva),
J.Myrheim (Copenhagen), and M.Regler (Vienna) are acknowledged.
Parts related to physics have been eliminated
and are now presented separately as
The Particle Detector BriefBook.

Some comments on this Internet version of The Data Analysis BriefBook:

The html version has been generated automatically, using
Latex2html version 3.1. Minor adjustments by hand were necessary; if in some
places the html presentation is not optimal, we ask for your understanding.

Although itself available on Internet with multiple internal
cross references, you will find practically
no URLs of other external sites;
we have found much interesting
information with our browsers, but a good deal of it can be
characterized as shortlived, unfinished and abandoned,
unchecked, or sometimes even containing outright errors.

It is our intention to avoid these pitfalls as best we can: the
BriefBook has been conceived primarily as a book, i.e. with
stability in mind. The BriefBook is sure to contain some errors:
we will be eager to correct them. In some areas, it is incomplete:
we will include obvious omissions and let it evolve slowly
towards other, related subjects. Updates, however, will be
carefully grouped, and somewhat oriented along the lines
successive printed editions take.

All this being said, we want to give here some pointers towards
sites where definitely useful, in many cases more detailed, and hopefully
long-lived information can be found: